New York, Nov. 19: A new planet the size of Jupiter with origins outside the Milky Way galaxy has been discovered, according to a study in the journal Science.
The finding is important because the planet orbits a very old star that is nearing the end of its life span and may soon collapse.
“We want to study this and see how far the star can evolve until the whole planet is engulfed or destroyed,” said Mr Johny Setiawan, the study’s lead author and an astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany.
The star, known as HIP 13044, has been around for at least six billion years and has only several million years of life left, Mr Setiawan said. Currently, the star and its planet are in the Milky Way.
An abundance of metal is thought to help planets form, so it is surprising that the star has only about 1 per cent of the metallicity of the Sun.
It is unclear whether the planet ever had life forms, since it is a gaseous planet like Jupiter. It’s distance from its host star is only a tenth of that between the earth and the Sun, making life on any nearby planets that may exist virtually impossible because of high temperatures.